STRONG, INTELLIGENT, BEAUTIFUL: the three no-brainer qualities for a successful CEO.

BRING ALL THE GIRLS YOU KNOW!!! All of the girls that you know: bring them. It is important to EMPHASISE THIS because it’s not like girls will come to this event of their own accord. CEO is a scary word!

Jokes aside, diversity events are needed and come from good motivations, but many are badly advertised and detract more than anything. You can’t just throw together a few buzzwords — it takes work to break down ‘streotypes’.

I still can’t get over the ‘BEAUTIFUL’ as one of the three…

Bittersweet synth tunes, pastel colours, intro credits. I immediately think of a hip queer coming-of-age movie, but maybe that’s just me. I begin playing Into by animal phase.

The voice acting is a pleasant surprise, and helps set the scene: you’re whispering and not paying much attention to your art teacher. “Draw what you see, not what you know”, she says. One of the teens whispers “we wrote on our drawing”, clearly not giving a shit. Relatable.

Some parts of the conversation are funny; teens trying to sound deep is cringy only because everyone can see a bit of themselves…

It was comfortably dark, until a piercing green light dragged them out of sleep. It had been two years since they were transferred to this unit, yet the morning neon lights were as ugly as ever. Their mind drifted to their daily tasks, to the Cafeteria’s menu, to their crush. They realised they were daydreaming. They stopped: it was not allowed; the Colony had survived as long as it did thanks to their strong discipline, and they understood that this was important to preserve.

They got out of the hermetic pod and stretched. A few bones cracked.

The lab looked…

I read a review of Friary Road by Pip Turner, and the piece convinced me to experience the game for myself. I decided to write about it, too: it’s always interesting to see how our experiences of a game, although hyper-personal, always have something in common. Something human.

The ambient soundtrack starts right off — paired with the colour palette and artstyle, I am reminded of Kentucky Route Zero. The characters talk through the means of a plain textbox and it’s a bit clumsy, but I don’t feel too detracted from the game. It was made in a day, after…

I have been feeling pretty lonely lately. Turns out having a large friend group does not mean you’ll have all the emotional support you need; I miss having proper conversations with some people who are far away now. With that thought, I open Every City Is The Same by Aleks Samoylov.

I start looking around the room, and as my attention moves between objects, the game reminds me of feelings and moments and people. I turn off the light, and notice a piece that I hadn’t read yet. The white text is burned onto the unlit wall. “And you miss…